Taking an amazing photograph is hard. So let's lower the bar a bit this week. I want you to…
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WINNER: Banana In Oatmeal

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I finally got around to starting my eat healthy resolution. I call it "banana in oatmeal". Absolutely horrifying.

Taken with my Sony Xperia sp. I used the built in smart auto and focused on the tip of the banana.

- Chris Longhurst

Shutterstock Gone Wrong

My goal with this photo was to make the worst Shutterstock image possible. I've been making several work trips in the past week, and the litter on the passenger side floor has been building up. Many stock photos have a narrow depth of field, and I wanted to capture that, but with the most cluttered composition possible.

-Christopher Sears

Mmm, Kiwi

Discovered before heading in to work on the morning of submission that the kiwi that I used from last week had started to mold. I grabbed this shot of it and did no post-processing.

- Jason Dennett

Life Is Like An Empty Box of Chocolates

This is the worst, saddest thing I encountered: my box of chocolates is empty. Nikon D7100, 35mm, f/4, 1/60, ISO 1600, and no small amount of tears.

-Matt Owen

Sleepwalker

Tony Matelli's Sleepwalker statue has caused quite a stir at Wellesley College, an all-women's college in Massachusetts. While some visitors find it creepy and full of sexual assault innuendos, others are taken by its depth of complexity, quirky playfulness, and masterful craftsmanship. Art is successful when it stirs up emotions and forces communication. Visitors who not in a million years, would say two words to each other, are conversing. Art escaping the museums; bringing out strong emotions in neutral places – there are far worse things. iPhone 4s.

-Costas Kitsos

It's Snowing!!!

Shot with a Canon G9. I contemplated either shooting in night or snow mode - because it was both. But I figured night mode, with a flash, in combination with shooting through a window that needed cleaning, as well as the outdoor lights, would be the way to go. I wasn't disappointed!

Aperture: f/2.8 to draw the eye to the subject of the photoISO: 80 to really pick up the falling snowflakesExposure: 1 second to properly see surrounding detail not lit by the flash or the outdoor lightHand-held: Because - flashFlash was in auto mode, with red-eye reduction in case there were any hidden critters that would have ruined the photo with red eyesThe only thing better than a sunset photo is a snow photo taken from inside the house, unless it's a sunset photo while it's snowing, taken from inside the house.

- Steve Everist

Puppy Dog Eyes

Canon T4i - 40mm lens - 1 sec - f/8.0 - ISO 200What's one of the aspects I find makes something the worst in either picture/film? A lot of shakiness, I just hate shaky cam. In film, I find it as a crutch for those who cannot shoot an action scene well and thus use shaky cam to mask their shortcomings. In photos, it's lot more obvious why people who shake the camera take what could have been a great shot and turn it into a horrible one. Worse because you could see the potential of what that photo could have been.

I sometimes take my camera to bed with me to either look over photos I took earlier or to keep it there to be able to take portraiture shots of the dogs when they sleep with me on the bed. So this shot was created by shooting one of the dogs, Tabitha, laying down on top of me. I brought the shutter speed to 1 second to allow for more shakiness to be caught on cam. I offset it with a lower ISO and higher f-stop and then proceeded to shake the camera and myself around to capture the shot. Then I imported and developed the shot in Lightroom with minor adjustments to correct the color. So while this photo exemplifies one of the things I deem the worst in photography, I do how the light is reflected in Tabitha's eyes shows up in the shot as it was taken.

- Long Hong

Clutter

Tinkering stuff on sofa sidetable.This is the definition of bad compositon and subject.

- Gregory Boehler

Pinhole

Now, "Worst" is a challenge to sink my teeth into, and won't be automatically beat by a $5000 DSLR. I toyed with the idea of a picture of my gray painted concrete floor, but decided to go with this image instead. It hearkens back to my childhood and a 2nd grade project with pinhole photography when all the kids either made the hole too big or too small, and not one got the desired effect. I did this one with an iPhone 5S in auto mode, and the pinhole was provided by a Postit note. Looks rather mundane to me!

- Jonas Demuro

Underwater

This picture was taken on a Nikon Coolpix S31. I was on a day hike on the Lime Kiln trail near Granite Falls, WA when I came across a stream. I decided to test out the underwater shooting feature. I just couldn't get it to come out like I wanted.

- Terry Mickail

Lunch In A Motel Room

Bad background bad lighting left over Burger King and has a fade filter

-Obadah Qandil

Nickelback

I used my iPhone. Nickelback is the worst, and pictures of computer screens are the worst, so I combined two terrible terrible things and this came out. I thought taking a picture of this might make my phone explode, but it didn't.

- Benjamin Roesler

Bookcase

This picture of the book case right above my desk in my room was takenwith a Samsung Note phone camera. The flash was turned on, a whitebalance of cloudy cosen and an eV exposure of -2 stops set.The space there already is crowded with books, decorative items andthings I tend to use on a regular basis except that Belkin router thatsits like a book-holder.The picture is angled on purpose to make it worse and no attempts atenhancing it were made.

-Mazen Fakih MD

Wow everybody. Horrible, horrible entries this week! Especially to those of you who managed to make something beautiful out of something ugly—those of you I call cheaters! (Just kidding.)

I will say, it always takes guts to put yourself out there in the public sphere as an artist, but to do so with a banana sticking out of a cup of oatmeal, in b horror movie black and white, well, that takes true intestinal fortitude.